Currently, access to the Internet and the use of e-mail has created various gaps in security which threaten families, consumers and corporations. Parents and corporations need to properly control the users' access to the disapproved contents and to web sites that are deemed untrustworthy. While there are tools in the market, none have fully resolved the problem. Such tools may excessively filter content and web sites to an extent that they even do not allow the user access to some valuable and useful web sites. This is called the filtering accuracy, and currently, none of the available products can reach to 100% accuracy.
In addition there are other risk factors to the user and corporate data, which may violate the user privacy preferences. For example, the existence of snoopers, eavesdroppers, remote and local intruders, Spyware (software programs and agents are installed on the user computers without their knowledge and act as Trojan horse on the user computers to steal user information, monitor the user behavior and transmit the information to their senders), impersonators (use the computer address for their own use for sending Spam emails or other activities), hijackers (take control of the computer resources for unauthorized use such as providing pornography services for their own clients), computer viruses, and etc., create real threats to the user information and privacy. Some web sites collect the user information and transmit the information unprotected over the wire. This allows the snoopers and eavesdroppers to use such information.
E-mail systems are abused data mining engines and eavesdroppers.
Further, there are factors that create disturbance, and waste valuable resources. This includes email Spams, disrupting advertisement pop-up windows.
Some additional privacy violations are imposed by obtaining the user information from unauthorized users and children. Some web sites even collect very secure information from children.
Additional drawbacks associated with the current systems include the fact that they require significant maintenance and configuration requirements. Since there are no single products that answer all the problems together, the user may need to install several products to reach a fairly successful performance.